The Rail Budget (2014-2015) presented today by the Railway Minister Shri Sadanand Gowda can be described in brief as essentially anti-poor. The unprecedented hike -14% - in the fares will burden basically the large segment of the poor of the country.

There
are no concessional provisions for students and unemployed in the
budget who are victims of a wrongly planned education and economic
system. Secondly, by allowing FDI to facilitate 'high speed
network' primarily meant for the rich, the budget is an undisguised
leap in the direction of the corporatisation of the railways.

After
Defence the government has opened the Railways to be looted by the
profit hungry corporate houses. It is, in fact, a neo-liberal rail
budget prepared to fulfil the dreams of corporate houses and the
beneficiaries of neo-liberalism.

The
Socialist Party strongly opposes this rail budget for its anti-poor
'vision'. In the considered view of the Socialist Party the rail
budget should be prepared in a manner that first and foremost concern
is the poor who do not have alternative choices, except sleeper or
general class, in travel mode. The railways should ensure that this
large but unprivileged segment can travel within their own country
with comfort, dignity and security.

The
Socialist Party condemns the practice of dragging the names of our
great thinkers and freedom fighters who firmly stood for the
betterment of the deprived hard working masses through a self-reliant
system.

Invoking
names of Gandhi and Vivekananda by the minister in his budgetary
speech once again exposes the habitual hypocrisy of the ruling class
that caters to the privileged and the powerful while invoking the
needs of the ignored and the struggling majority.